Cheryl Miller: An immigrant’s cautionary tale of a failed economy

Cheryl Miller

Wednesday

Jun 22, 2011 at 12:01 AMJun 22, 2011 at 10:16 PM

Anka emigrated from Poland in the early 1990s, shortly after Lech Walesa defied the Communist party and was elected president of Poland. As a U.S. citizen, she is distressed by our nonchalant acceptance of government controls, bailouts and handouts, and our personal surrender to the allure of easy credit with no money down. Anka’s past could very well be our future.

Last week, I attended the annual convention of an organization with which I have been involved for the past decade.

My husband has only nominal interest in the group, but because he has a lust for driving and enjoys a changing scene, he cheerfully agreed to be my chauffeur/companion.

The meeting was in Chicago. We were making record time in the car until we managed to get lost, which we always do — guess who’s getting a GPS navigator for his upcoming birthday? –– while searching for a restaurant glimpsed from the interstate. The ten-hour drive, thus, stretched to twelve.

We never did find the restaurant, but the unintentional detour provided food for thought. It is one thing to read statistics in a newspaper; quite another to see the reality of the numbers first-hand.

We ended up on secondary roads until we found our way back to the turnpike. Some of the roads through northern Indiana presented a tableau of economic devastation: entire malls empty and boarded, weeds growing through asphalt aprons of long-vacant gas stations, house after house with a realty sign in the front yard.

Children’s squeals of excitement and laughter were only imaginary at a water park we passed, its once-vibrantly painted structures grown lifeless and dull. In better times, kids would have played on the sidewalks of these nearly empty neighborhoods, and homeowners would have called to one another from shady porches on a summer evening. I wondered, where had everyone gone?

Conditions in parts of my own state of N.Y. are dismal, but this degree of impoverishment was an incomprehensible shock. By the time we left Indiana, the shock had morphed into a weary sadness.

Then we hit Chicago: the magnificent skyline of concrete, steel and glass gleamed with the orange reflection of the setting sun and stretched into azure heavens. It was so thrilling a sight that it washed the gloom of northern Indiana’s hard times from my mind.

The next two days were busy ones full of new faces and ideas. We took a break from the agenda the following day and, instead, went into the hotel bar for a late lunch and a beer. The bartender, a woman of about 45, spoke with an accent. Intrigued, we struck up a conversation and got a bonus primer in history, civics and economics.

Anka emigrated from Poland in the early 1990s, shortly after Lech Walesa defied the Communist party and was elected president of Poland. Having lived under the control of the state, she told us, she despaired of the apathy of so many U.S. citizens and their disinterest in politics and the nature of liberty.

As a survivor of the failed state-planned economy, Anka proudly noted that, thanks to its recent adoption of a market-based economy, Poland’s trade freedom and conservative fiscal policies was the only European country to escape the global recession of 2009.

As a U.S. citizen, she is distressed by our nonchalant acceptance of government controls, bailouts and handouts, and our personal surrender to the allure of easy credit with no money down.

At that, the vision of modern-day ghost towns in the center of the most prosperous nation in history sprang to my mind. Anka’s past could very well be our future.

Cheryl Miller from Macedon, N.Y., can be emailed at Fortuna_reilly@yahoo.com.

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